There Will Be No Spa Treatments for the New Members of Wells Fargo’s Board – TheStreet

VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow is quoted on the unusual order by the Fed to “refresh” four board seats at Wells Fargo:

To use the term refreshment is to suggest that this is just business as usual,” Nell Minow, vice chair of consultant ValueEdge Advisors, which counsels big investors on corporate governance, said in a telephone interview. “But it’s really a euphemism to make it sound like they’re just fluffing up the pillows instead of pushing the rats off the sinking ship.”The delicate verbiage offers an example of how corporate directors are barely held accountable for failing to adequately perform their duty of overseeing management on behalf of shareholders. And it’s a real job, or at least a very good part-time job: At Wells Fargo, directors got paid in a range of $280,000 to $400,000 a year for attending just nine meetings in 2015, the last year before allegations emerged about the bank’s overly aggressive sales practices.Executives, traders and bankers can be subject to “clawbacks” – essentially a revocation of prior years’ pay – if their activities result in financial harm to their company. But that rarely happens with corporate directors.